Difalco seemed to sense the sarcasm in his voice, because he pouted theatrically. “Oh, but you’ve got to take me seriously, man. Don’t play me along like some dumb Eyetalian from the street.”
“I don’t think you’re dumb, believe me, Mr. Difalco. I’m just getting tired of the fancy footwork.”
Difalco sighed like a child deprived of his game. “Everyone else thinks Blair is another dickless wonder like Miller, but I know Raquel had the same effect on him as she had on every other red-blooded male in the place. He got her into his lab, then he fucked her, and before he knew it, he had the entire Canadian contingent of the Lebanese Christian Militia on his ass. They’re not subtle, those guys. The honour of their women is a sacred thing.”
“Do you have any evidence to support your theory?
“Oh sure. I’m sitting here with a signed confession which I forgot to give you because I’m enjoying this so much.”
Green grinned at him patiently. He had learned the art of silence from Sharon, who used it as a therapy tool to get people to open up. Green had found it equally effective with suspects. Most people couldn’t stand silence, and Difalco was no exception.
“No, I don’t have any proof,” he snapped peevishly. “Raquel never said to me ‘my uncle is going to kill Jonathan Blair’ or anything. But she talked about her uncle always interfering in her life, trying to fix her up with nice Lebanese men, screening her phone calls, threatening to send her back to Beirut if she didn’t shape up. Not that I blame the guy, actually! Raquel was wild. If my sister did half of what she did, I’d be packing her off to a convent so fast her head would spin.”
“Did Raquel seem afraid of him?”
“Afraid, but defiant—that was the way she was. She wasn’t going to let that fat old blow-bag push her around.”
“Do you have any proof Raquel was sexually involved with Blair?”
“Sexually involved?” Difalco repeated the phrase as if it were in a foreign tongue. “God, you cops. How about the sated look in Raquel’s eye, does that qualify? She draped herself all over him, whispered in his ear, stuck her tits in his face. It didn’t take an Einstein to figure out what was up.”
“But did you ever see Blair reciprocate?”
“Blair was one of those Upper Canada College types, smooth and unreadable. Not like me. I like a girl, I let her know. But I can tell you this: he never pushed her hand away. Once, I surprised them in the elevator, and their tongues were halfway down each other’s throats. When he saw me he broke away, and that’s the only time I ever saw him unglued. He was all red in the face and breathing like he’d climbed Mount Everest.”
“When was this?”
“About two weeks ago.”
“Did they say anything to you?”
He laughed at the memory. “Blair looked like he wanted the earth to swallow him up. Raquel winked at me.”
“Did she seem serious about him?”
A faraway light glinted in Difalco’s eyes. “For that week, yeah, maybe. Raquel’s like a summer storm. She blows into your life all wild and full of passion, turns it upside down, and then—” He broke off, casting Green a startled glance that revealed yet another of his personae, one that was almost wistful. Then he restored his languid smile. “But you should be asking her all these questions, Officer, not me. See for yourself. It’ll make your day, and your night too, I bet.”
“Joe,” Green began, deliberately choosing a more intimate address, “there is something that doesn’t add up here, and I wonder if you can help me out…”
Difalco frowned at him warily.
“I’ve been a criminal investigator for over fourteen years, and I’ve seen a lot of street toughs in my day. I’ve seen Native Indian stoic, Irish and French Canadian bully, English boor, Italian macho…you’re trying to fit, but it just doesn’t sit right. I get your message loud and clear—you think you’re hot stuff, you like sex, you like women—their bodies, anyway. But I also see someone else sitting in front of me. We’re all alone here, Joe.” He gestured around the room expressively. “Just you, me and the constable taking notes, and he’s heard it all, believe me. So drop the macho stuff for me. You can put it back on when you leave here if it makes you feel better.”
Difalco came alive. “Are you trying to psychoanalyze me, Detective? You implying deep down I’m afraid my dick’s not big enough—”
“This has nothing to do with your dick. Your dick is fine. It’s just not all you’ve got.”
Difalco laughed, but a faint dull red spread up his neck. A lock of curly black hair fell over his brow, giving him the vulnerable look Green had glimpsed earlier. “I hope not. Sex is fine, but even I can’t do it twenty-four hours a day.”
“Right. So the other twenty-three hours or so, you spend closeted with computer blips and pages of numbers trying to understand how people speak. That’s the part that doesn’t fit, Joe. Where’s the glory in that, where’s the power and the big bucks that a real macho guy would need to keep going? Studs aren’t interested in brain theory.”
“Something wrong with brain theory? You saying I’m a wimp?”
“Cut the bluster, Joe. You know exactly what I’m saying. Will the real Joe Difalco please talk to me?”
Difalco studied him, his eyes narrowed and the lazy smile quite gone. “Did you really think I was that shallow? That to me being a man just means fucking all day and riding around in a white Cadillac with gold chains around my neck? I want to be somebody. Those gold-chained Romeos, they’re a dime a dozen on the street, but a doctor or a professor, they have respect. I was going into med school, you know. I was going to be ‘il Dottore’, but I couldn’t hack the bullshit. In med school they tell you where to piss and when. That’s not my style. Then I took Halton’s undergraduate physiology course and I met ‘il Professore’, and I said to myself ‘This is it!’ Nobody pushes you around, you call your own shots. Halton goes to conferences all over the world and rubs shoulders with the best. In August he’s presenting our work in Stockholm, and if I play my cards right, I get to go.” Difalco rolled his eyes knowingly. “Stockholm. You know, in Europe they have great respect for university professors. Much more than they have here. There, learning and wisdom count more than money. That’s my kind of power and glory, Officer. Hell, I already have all the money I need anyway. My old man swims in it. There’s no mystery to me, no deep dark secrets. Sorry to fuck up your amateur analysis.”
“Respect,” Green remarked, undaunted. “Respect is important to you?”
“Isn’t it to you? Would you be doing this job if you weren’t good at it and other people didn’t think you were good at it?”
“I do this job because I enjoy it and because I like the feeling of solving a case.”
Difalco snorted, flashing his white teeth. “Another dickless wonder. A ‘research-is-my-life’ type like Miller and Blair. Bullshit. Human nature isn’t like that. I’m just more honest about it than the rest of you.”
Green let the silence hang as he collected his impressions. He still felt he was grappling with illusions and contradictions that bore little resemblance to the real Joseph Difalco. Halton had said Difalco was bright and intuitive, and the last hour spent dodging each other had certainly proved that. Green had made very little headway in shaking Difalco’s story or breaking down his façade, but a few chinks had shown through. The young man had feigned disdain for women and for the gentler subtleties of romance, yet Raquel Haddad had certainly shaken him. Like a summer storm, he had said—a curiously poetic phrase for a macho stud. And more importantly, Difalco was a man who craved recognition, for whom belittlement or failure would be tantamount to emasculation. Such a man might do anything to ensure his success. Falsifying his research would be as natural as breathing…
But two minutes later, when Myles Halton called his office and a constable came down to tap on the interrogation room door, he found himself back at square one. The analysis Jonathan Blair had conducted unequivocally supported Difalco’s
claim, Halton said. There had been no fraud, no attempt to mislead.
Except, perhaps, by David Miller.
* * *
Pointing his Corolla gratefully towards home, Green slipped a Sting CD into the player. Mellow rock to soothe the frazzled spirit. He was just beginning to unwind when his cell phone rang. It was Superintendent Jules himself, reminding him that he was over two hours late for his appointment with Jonathan Blair’s father, who by this time probably had a blister on his right index finger from phoning.
Swearing, Green glanced at his watch. His son would be asleep by now anyway, and any chance for a goodnight tuck-in was long gone. It didn’t matter what time he got home now, as long as he retrieved the baby from the sitter’s before Sharon got home at seven in the morning. Promising himself he’d read two bedtime stories tomorrow, he turned the car around and headed up Elgin Street towards the Château Laurier Hotel, which presided like a Disneyland castle over the downtown core. The neo-gothic stone spires gave way inside to carved oak, marble, and muted oriental carpeting. Henry Blair’s suite was on the fourth floor, and when Green knocked, the door was flung back immediately as if Blair had been pacing just inside.
In the doorway stood a handsome, well-preserved man in his late fifties, his silver hair on end and his tie askew. He seized Green’s hand and literally pulled him into the room.
“You have no idea how difficult it is, Inspector, to be trapped in this room with nothing to do but think about your dead son.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Blair. I was delayed interrogating a witness.” Blair had paced half way across the room, light and restless on his feet, and he swung back sharply.
“Any luck? Do you know who did it?”
Green could see the desperation in the man’s eyes and understood his need for answers, but he had handled enough grieving relatives over the years to know that false or premature answers, and the brief comfort they offered, were worse than no answers. And with all the people clamouring for answers in this case, he had to choose his confidants carefully. So with reluctance and regret, he trotted out his standard line. “My investigation reveals several leads. We’re pursuing them, I assure you.”
“When will you have a solution?”
“At this stage it’s too early to tell. It’s a very complex case.”
Blair had paused by a silver tray on which stood a bottle of Rémi Martin and two cognac glasses. “I’m finally going to allow myself one of these. I didn’t want to be incoherent by the time you arrived, but by God! if ever I needed a drink! Will you join me?”
When Green demurred, Blair poured himself a healthy dose of the amber liquid and picked up the glass in shaking hands. Green pictured the man under ordinary circumstances swirling the glass in his elegant, fine-boned hand, inhaling the vapours and only then taking a slow, appreciative sip. But tonight he clutched the glass and gulped at the cognac like a man just out of the desert. Green gave him a few seconds.
“When was the last time you saw or heard from your son, Mr. Blair?”
Blair slumped into a chair. “He was coming home to visit me for Father’s Day. Next Saturday, he would have arrived. He was going this weekend to buy the plane ticket. Said he’d been working too hard, wanted a break to get away from it all. University life can be claustrophobic, I know; too much inbreeding and jealousy. He sounded worn out and disillusioned, said he was thinking of transferring to the University of British Columbia. Myles Halton had been Marianne’s idea. She’d known him from her undergraduate days—we both had, actually, we were at Simon Fraser together—and she never could resist using her influence. Not that Halton needed much persuading. He was delighted to have Jonathan. Bright, articulate, hard-working and the son of an influential heiress who runs a granting agency. And to show her gratitude, Marianne is already underwriting half the cost of some new equipment he wants. I’d rather hoped Jonathan would come to graduate school in Vancouver and give just the two of us a chance for once. But who am I, after all?” He smiled wanly and rose to replenish his cognac glass.
Green watched him splash half the cognac on the table trying to get it into the glass, but he resisted the urge to help. He knew that nothing he could do would ease the pain, and he had learned to watch and wait. Brian Sullivan had a strength and presence that was somehow comforting, but despite all the compassion Green felt, he’d never learned that skill. The best way he could help was to find the loved one’s killer, and he hoped that he could glean all the important information he needed before the poor man was reduced to incoherence.
As he had hoped, after a few gulps Blair returned to his seat and picked up the thread. “I’m not going to get cynical. I’m not a cynic. Some maniac comes out of the darkness and wipes out my only child, but I’m not going to be a cynic. My son was finally coming home to me, was talking of living with me, and…” Blair broke off, pressing his eyes shut. For a long moment he breathed raggedly, and Green prayed he would recover. Finally he placed the brandy shakily on the table beside him. “I’d better not have any more of that for a bit.”
“When did Jonathan tell you about his plans to come home?”
“Last Sunday.” Blair dried his eyes with a deep, shuddering sigh. “He always calls Sunday. He said he was almost finished a portion of his research, only a week or so to go. I’d even got as far as planning some of his favourite meals. Damn!” Blair clenched his fists. “This is so hard! Have you any leads, Inspector? Oh yes, you told me you had. But who would want to do this to Jonathan? Jonathan wasn’t like his mother, always centre stage and stirring up trouble. He didn’t make enemies. Do you have any idea why he was killed?”
“I’m afraid I can’t say at this time, sir.”
“But I suppose you’ll tell Marianne. I understand within the hour she had the three heads of the police department at her fingertips, whereas I had to wait eight hours to get an interview with one inspector.”
“I have revealed nothing to Mrs. Blair either, sir.”
The distraught man ran his hand over his face. “I’m sorry. I’m sounding petty and God knows, I’m way beyond petty. I don’t begrudge Marianne her influence; I just feel so damn impotent! I don’t know what I’m supposed to do while you people figure out what happened, and Marianne runs around pretending to be in charge.”
“I’d be happy to give you the same briefings I give her.”
“Oh!” Blair looked at Green, and his expression grew rueful. “That isn’t what I meant, but thank you. I appreciate that. I’m sorry, Inspector. I know I keep saying that, but I can’t seem to keep my thoughts in order. I hope you’ll treat our conversation tonight as confidential. I wouldn’t want Marianne to know what a mess I am.”
“I don’t think she’s feeling all that different from you at this moment. The murder of one’s child is probably the worst trauma a person ever has to survive.” Green winced even as he said the words. Sullivan would have managed to make them sound human. “I think you might find it helps to talk to her.”
“I called while I was waiting for you. I asked if she wanted to come here to meet you with me. She said she was expecting Myles Halton to come over.” His face twisted, and Green watched with alarm as he paced around the oriental carpet. Anxious to fend off an emotional scene, Green flipped quickly back through his notes. Blair seemed a sensitive and intelligent man, bound to his son by similar temperament as well as by blood. Beneath the scattered thoughts, he perhaps had some intuitive grasp of his son’s recent distress.
“You said Jonathan sounded disillusioned. Did he say with what?”
“He didn’t. He’s a private person, as I normally am, present circumstances excepted. But I had the impression it might have been with Myles Halton.”
“Halton?” Green kept his voice carefully neutral. “Can you recall exactly what he said?”
“It wasn’t anything he said—about Halton, that is. He said he’d been working really hard on this project but wasn’t sure he liked the way it was turning out. I said something a
bout all scholarly work having its setbacks, and he said he wished that was all it was. I asked him what he meant, and he said he thought he needed to get away for a bit to get some perspective. Then he commented that while he was out in Vancouver, he might look up Professor George Lester at UBC. I took that to mean that perhaps everything wasn’t as rosy as when he had started with Halton. He began with such high hopes. I’d had my doubts from the beginning, but of course I kept them to myself. Marianne would not have regarded them as credible.”
“What doubts?”
“That working for Halton would prove to be the edifying experience everyone expected.”
“Why?”
Blair had returned to his armchair and had been quietly controlled as he reported his son’s conversation. Now he fidgeted and reached for his cognac. “I’m not sure any of this is relevant, and I’m also not sure I can be objective about Halton—” he stopped abruptly “—but I knew him at Simon Fraser, even before Marianne did, and I know his flaws go deeper than Marianne thinks they do. I was in my fourth year of economics, and Halton was a freshman trying to get into our fraternity. He was brilliant and ambitious, but he was also an opinionated, loud-mouthed bully. He wanted in, and he didn’t care who he stepped on to get in. He’s acquired some social finesse since then and is probably more circumspect, but I imagine that ambitious bully is never far below the surface. I suspect he wouldn’t let too much stand in his way.”
Green let the man ramble on until the brandy and exhaustion had taken firm hold, and then he slipped quietly away. Driving back to the apartment to the soothing strains of Sting, he pondered what Henry Blair had said. The man was under extreme stress, his thoughts fragmented by shock and grief, and his judgment marred by resentment and envy. It was hard to know how much truth there was in his suspicions about Halton and about Jonathan’s disillusionment, and how much wishful thinking. Blair had lost his only son, and he was entitled to a lapse in realism. Green remembered how he had felt years ago when he came home to find his house empty and nothing but a cold note from his first wife: “I’ve taken Hannah. We’ve gone to Fred in Vancouver”. His daughter hadn’t died, just left his life, and yet the pain had been excruciating.
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